Pretzels were traditionally formed by hand rolling dough into a rope and then manually twisting and folding the rope over on itself to create the common twisted pretzel. Although there is a certain appeal to the unique appearance of handmade pretzels, as one is not identical to the other, the production of such food products is very labor intensive and involves operations which are very monotonous to workers. As a result, various types of equipment have been created to form pretzels automatically with minimal human intervention.
One of the drawbacks of automated pretzel forming equipment is that each individual pretzel is virtually indistinguishable from all of the other pretzels produced by that machine. As a consequence, the pretzels lack the unique individualized appearance of a handmade product. Although the automated machinery can produce large quantities of pretzels very rapidly, it is desirable to produce them in a manner in which the pretzels have a unique appearances resembling the handmade product.